Button, Mahar Machine Gun Regiment, 1946 (c)

Brass button with crossed Vickers machine guns with upright katar dagger, with an upper scroll bearing an inscription in Nagari script, with the unit title, 'The Mahar M.G. Regiment', in English, on a scroll below.

Soldiers from the Mahar community of Maharashtra in India were a mainstay of the East India Company's Bombay Army. Reorganisation of the Indian Army in the 1890s resulted in the demobilisation of the Mahar Regiment but a new Mahar battalion was raised during World War One. Disbandment followed the end of the Great War. During World War Two the Mahar Regiment was raised again in 1941, with units serving on the North West Frontier and in Burma and Persia.

The Regiment was renamed the Mahar Machine Gun Regiment in 1946. After independence in 1947, the Indian Army's Mahar Regiment retained the crossed Vickers machine gun insignia of this unit but the obelisk, or 'victory pillar', commemorating the Battle of Koregaon, fought in 1818, was replaced with a katar dagger.

From the Field Marshal Sir John Chapple Indian Army Collection.